Switch to formula

Hello all, my baby girl is 7 1/2 months old and we've been so lucky to have a near-effortless (notice the near!) time with breastfeeding. However, her father and I are getting married when she'll be a week shy of 11 months. We plan on honeymooning without her for 5 days and I don't want the stress of pumping for me and more importantly the stress for her being suddenly stripped of her breastfeeding comfort so soon. For this reason, I've decided to wean her very gradually from breast milk to formula. She's always preferred drinking expressed milk in a bottle to actually nursing from the beginning so I think the process should be pretty easy.

My questions lies with formula choices. If any of you have ever switched BF baby to formula, did you begin with supplemental formula while you were doing both? I plan to only supplement with formula for 1 feeding per day for the first week, 2 a day for the second, etc. I'm not sure where to begin or what to start with and could really use some helpful advice.

I know this forum is supposed to advocate breastfeeding for as long as you can but I truly feel this is the right decision and I wouldn't have decided to wean her any earlier than now. I do feel some guilt but I have to remind myself of the circumstances and the what will be good in the long run. Thanks for your understanding and positivity.

Also!! How long did it take for your milk to completely dry up after the weaning process is finished? I would really like to have a leak-free wedding.

Re: Switch to formula

Originally Posted by @llli*violetsmom

Also!! How long did it take for your milk to completely dry up after the weaning process is finished? I would really like to have a leak-free wedding.

When I weaned DS2 suddenly at 22 months it took me about 5 days to stop getting engorged, but that was going from several feedings a day to none. If you were to wean more gradually, I don't imagine leaking being too much of an issue. Like if you were only nursing once or twice a day for a while and then stopped, I'm guessing you might leak just a little around the times you were used to nursing.... But that's just a guess.

Re: Switch to formula

The length of time it takes for milk to dry up is as individual as every women. I was still making milk 6 months after weaning. Will you still be leaking? I would guess unlikely but that is no guarantee either.

An idea, to cut down on your guilt, maybe you could keep one nursing session per day, like before bedtime. Once you are down to only one per day it is unlikely to cause engorgement or plugged duct issues when you go away for a few days. If it does, you can hand express into a sink for a couple minutes, no big time commitment. You might even be able to come back to the same once-per-day nursing schedule after the honeymoon, no pumping required.

I don't have any advice on slowly switching to formula, but since she is already taking bottles I think your idea to swap one more bottle per week is sound.

Re: Switch to formula

As what PP said, milk drying up is different for each woman. Mine took 2 months after DD weaned herself. I think you're doing good at introducing her to formula. Here's a link from here that might give you some idea: http://forums.llli.org/showthread.ph...Breastfed-Baby

Re: Switch to formula

Good advice from the PPs. Go slow and you should be fine.

I know you're here for advice on weaning, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't suggest a couple of alternative strategies that might enable you to breastfeed longer. First, you could take your honeymoon just a little later. You've already upended the traditional sequencing of marriage-then honeymoon-then baby, so why not upend it just a little more and push the honeymoon back a month or so? Second, you could just put her on formula for the duration of your honeymoon, pumping or expressing only if you felt uncomfortably full. By 11.5 months, a lot of babies are already eating a lot of solids and not nursing that much, so leaking/fullness might not be much of a problem. If you did it this way, it would probably be easier to pick up with nursing when you came back- and toddler nursing is really useful as a parenting tool and often a lot of fun.